[meteorite-list] More Twilight Zone Stuff: Red Rain Rapidly Rears when Roasted

Mon Feb 16 13:37:28 EST 2009

>From Last Fall but I missed the part about it multiplying when heated to 300C

<http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/080908_redrain.htm>

Report: cells “from space” have unusual makeup
Sept. 8, 2008 Special to World Science  

A lineage of odd microbes that may have crashed into Earth aboard a meteor in 2001 seem to contain molecules not found in Earthly cells, two scientists are reporting.

Although many remain skeptical over the remarkable claim of minuscule extraterrestrial visitors, Godfrey Louis, head of the physics department at Cochin University of Science and Technology in India, presented the findings at a scientific conference in San Diego on Aug. 12.

The mysterious orbs give off a blue fluorescence under ultraviolet light, according to researchers. (Courtesy G. Louis & A. S. Kumar)
The meeting was organized by SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering. The acronym reflects its former name as Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.

The microbes give off unsual sorts of fluorescence under specific lighting conditions, which follow patterns never seen in normal cells, according to Louis and Santhosh Kumar of Mahatma Gandhi University in India, co-authors of the report. The likely explanation, they added, is that the particles contain molecules not found in Earthly organisms. 

Louis and Kumar previously reported that the odd particles contain no DNA, although they replicate abundantly in ferocious heat by spawning new “cells” from within themselves. It was these offspring whose fluorescence properties the pair tested.

Mysterious, tiny red globules fell to Earth in a red rain that pelted parts of southern India sporadically for about two months in 2001, causing widespread puzzlement. The event, however, was the latest in a series of reports of colored rains from various places stretching back centuries, some better documented than others.

Louis and Kumar say the orbs could be cells from space because they have biological characteristics but match no known life form. A space rock could have broken up in the atmosphere and seeded clouds with these organisms, the pair argues, citing witness reports of an airburst just before the showers. Other scientists have conceded the particles are mystifying, but the claim of live cells from space is so bizarre that many are holding back any assent.

Some note that the hazards of journey through space, including intense radiation and extraordinary travel times, make the possibility of bacterial transfer among different solar systems unlikely.

“Exchanges of bacteria between planets in different solar systems are only possible during the birth cluster stage of the systems,” when they’re situated close together in a star cluster, wrote scientists with NASA and other institutions in a report this month. Our own solar system is far from being in such a stage. That paper has been accepted for publication in the research journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

On the other hand, researchers with Kristianstad University in Sweden and other institutions reported on Sept. 8 that some tiny Earth animals called tardigrades proved surprisingly resilient in outer space. Dried-out tardigrades lived for 10 days unprotected in that environment, and went on to reproduce, these scientists wrote in the Sept. 9 issue of the research journal Current Biology.

Louis and Kumar are persisting in their studies; their ideas have gained support from figures such as Chandra Wickramasinghe, director of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology at Cardiff University, U.K.

In his presentation, Louis said that “red cell” spawns under various lighting conditions exhbited properties violating a scientific principle known as Kasha’s Rule, found to have few exceptions elsewhere. The rule has to do with fluorescence, the phenomenon in which a substance emits light of one color upon stimulation by light from another color. Kasha’s rule holds that in general, the color of the arriving light and the emitted light are unrelated. 

To the contrary, Louis found that in the red globules’ “offspring,” alone among cells on Earth, these colors are related by a distinct pattern.

“Hence the presence of new kind of bio-molecules can be inferred,” Louis wrote in the presented paper. “Organisms replicating at 300 degrees [Celsius] and showing this kind of autofluorescence are currently unknown to exist on earth yet several thousand kilograms of these cells came down through the red rain.” The original parent cells are also under fluorescence testing and results will be reported later, Louis said.